On the Costs of Accessible Attitudes: Detecting That the Attitude Object Has Changed

Transcription

1 On the Costs of Accessible Attitudes: Detecting That the Attitude Object Has Changed Russell H. Fazio, Janet E. Ledbetter, and Tamara Towles-Schwen Indiana University Bloomington The present research examined whether individuals with more accessible attitudes have more difficulty detecting that the attitude object has changed. While being repeatedly exposed to photographs of undergraduates, participants either rehearsed their attitudes toward each photo or performed a control task. They then saw these original photos and computer-generated morphs representing varying degrees of change in an original. Participants in the attitude rehearsal condition required more time to correctly identify morphs that were similar to the original as "different" (Experiment 1) and made more errors in response to such morphs (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 revealed that participants with accessible attitudes perceived relatively less change; they were less likely to view a morph as a photo of a novel person and more likely to view it as a different photo of a person seen before. The costs and benefits of accessible attitudes are discussed. has been termed the knowledge or object appraisal function of attitudes (Katz, 1960; M. B. Smith, Bruner, & White, 1956; see Fazio, Blascovich, & Driscoll, 1992, for a more complete discussion). Having an evaluation of an attitude object stored in memory provides the individual with a "ready aid" when the object is encountered. The individual does not need to reflect on his or her evaluation. Instead, "the person is saved the energy consuming and sometimes painful process of figuring out de novo" how to respond to the object (M. B. Smith et al., 1956, p. 41). Over the last decade, a considerable amount of research has provided empirical confirmation of this long-standing assertion regarding the functional value of possessing an attitude. For example, a number of studies have indicated that attitudes provide a useful basis for making a decision when the situation does not permit sufficient opportunity to consider the details of the stimulus information carefully (e.g., Jamieson & Zanna, 1989; Kruglanski & Freund, 1983; Sanbonrnatsu & Fazio, 1990). When the time pressure to reach a decision is such that it does not permit careful deliberation, attitudes provide a convenient, quick, and easy basis for deciding. Additional research concerning the functionality of attitudes has illustrated the benefits that are provided, in particular, by attitudes that are highly accessible from memory. The relevant research was based on Fazio's model of attitudes as object-evaluation associations in memory (see Fazio, 1995, for a review of the model and related research). This model postulates that the strength of such object-evaluation associations can vary and that this associative strength determines the likelihood that the attitude will be activated from memory automatically on the individual's encountering the.attitude object. Experiments in which associative strength has been either measured or manipulated experimentally have provided converging evidence for the proposition that the likelihood The present research examines the costs that accessible attitudes may have for the individuals who hold them--specifically, the extent to which individuals with accessible attitudes have more difficulty detecting that the attitude object has changed than do individuals with less accessible attitudes. Attitude theorists have long regarded attitudes to be powerful and functional constructs for the individual (e.g., Allport, 1935). As a result, most attitude research to date has focused on the benefits attitudes provide for individuals. In contrast, our aim in the present work was to consider a potential cost of possessing a pre-existing attitude toward a stimulus object. The Functional Benefits of Attitudes Before turning to the question of costs, it will prove useful to review recent research concerning the functional value of attitudes. One of the major benefits of possessing an attitude relates to what Russell H. Fazio, Janet E. Ledbetter, and Tamara Towles-Schwen, Department of Psychology, Indiana University Bloomington. This research was supported by Senior Scientist Award MH01646 and Grant MH38832 from the National Institute of Mental Health. Portions of this research were presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, May We thank Michael Bailey, who developed and tested the software used to present the high-resolution color images and to collect the response and response latency data. We also thank Laura Hilden, Edward Hirt, and Paula Niedenthal for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Russell H. Fazio, Department of Psychology, l l 0 l East 10th Street, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana Electronic mail may be sent to fazio@indiana.edu. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000, Vol. 78, No. 2, Copyright 2000 by the American Psychological Association, Inc /00/$5.00 DOI: //

2 198 FAZIO, LEDBETrER, AND TOWLES-SCHWEN of automatic attitude activation on the individual's encountering the attitude object increases as the strength of the object-evaluation association increases (e.g., Bargh, Chaiken, Govender, & Pratto, 1992; Fazio, 1993; Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986). The implications of this view of attitudes for the matter of attitude functionality are very straightforward. The degree to which an attitude provides the individual with a "ready aid" depends on the extent to which the attitude is capable of being activated automatically from memory when the individual observes the attitude object. The likelihood of such automatic activation depends on the strength of the object-evaluation association. Thus, attitudes that involve a strong association are truly functional. By virtue of their accessibility from memory, such attitudes free the individual from the processing required for reflective thought about his or her evaluation of the object. Research motivated by this reasoning (Blascovich et al., 1993; Fazio et al., 1992) has provided direct evidence concerning the value of possessing accessible attitudes: Such attitudes actually ease decision making. These experiments used measures of autonomic reactivity to assess effort expenditure during decision making. The experiments involved a paradigm in which the critical task required participants to express a preference between pairs of abstract paintings. An attitude rehearsal manipulation occurred prior to this pairwise preference task. Participants judged their liking for each painting repeatedly, or they performed a "colornaming" task in which they announced the predominant color, the percentage of the painting that consisted of that color, and any other colors appearing in the painting. Thus, the manipulation permitted a comparison of individuals whose attitudes were relatively accessible as a result of their having rehearsed their evaluations with individuals who had been exposed to the paintings equally often but not provided with the opportunity to develop and rehearse attitudes. As expected, participants in the attitude rehearsal condition displayed less reactivity when they later performed the pairwise preference task than did participants in the color-naming condition. Apparently, the attitude rehearsal task led participants to develop associations in memory between each painting and their evaluation of the painting. Activation of these evaluations during the pairwise preference task made the decision task less demanding. Fewer resources were required to cope with the demands of the task. The adaptive value provided by accessible attitudes as a result of their freeing of resources for other, potentially more pressing matters is illustrated by a recent longitudinal study concerned with individuals' adjustment to a new life setting. In an investigation assessing the mental and physical health of students during their first semester in college, Fazio and Powell (1997) found the accessibility of academically related attitudes (e.g., attitudes toward specific courses and possible majors) to play an important role. Although the prevalence of recent stressful life events, as assessed at the beginning of the term, was associated with relatively poorer mental and physical health 2 months later, the strength of this relation was attenuated as attitude accessibility increased. Students who entered college already possessing accessible attitudes toward academically related matters were not as adversely affected by the stressors they were experiencing. In other words, attitude accessibility acted as a "buffering" variable. Apparently, having accessible attitudes and, thus, not having to deliberate extensively about academically oriented decisions permit- ted individuals to focus their cognitive and emotional resources on coping more effectively with impinging stressors. Accessible attitudes also have been found to influence such fundamental processes as attention and categorization in what can be viewed as a functionally beneficial manner. Objects toward which individuals hold highly accessible attitudes automatically attract attention (Roskos-Ewoldsen & Fazio, 1992). It appears that, when an object enters the visual field, any strongly associated evaluation may be activated from memory at an early stage in the processing of the visual information. Such evaluative activation then may direct further attention to that location in the visual field so that ultimately the object receives sufficient processing for it to be consciously noticed and reported relatively quickly. The functional value of such attentional orienting is obvious. Individuals are likely to notice those objects that they have personally defined as ones that can provide some reward or satisfaction--those that they wish to approach. Likewise, they are likely to notice those objects toward which they have a strongly associated negative evaluation--those that they wish to avoid. Thus, accessible attitudes direct attention to objects in the visual field that have the potential for hedonic consequences and ready individuals to respond appropriately. E. R. Smith, Fazio, and Cejka (1996) observed a similar orienting effect of accessible attitudes on categorization processes. Many objects and people that are encountered in daily life can be thought of in multiple manners; that is, they are multiply categorizable. For example, yogurt can be viewed as a health food or as a dairy product, sunbathing as an activity that can lead to cancer or as something one does at the beach, Pete Rose as a baseball player or as a gambler. In a series of experiments, E. R. Smith et al. (1996) found that the potential category toward which the individual had the more accessible attitude was more likely to dominate the categorization process. For example, when the accessibility of attitudes toward health food had been experimentally enhanced, yogurt was more likely to cue health food; when attitudes toward dairy products had been rehearsed, yogurt was more likely to cue dairy product. The more attitude-evoking the category, the more likely it was to govern categorization of the object (see Fazio & Dunton, i997, for related research). Thus, accessible attitudes alert one to potential construals that are hedonically relevant, preparing the individual to respond in a manner that is likely to maximize positive outcomes and minimize negative ones. In sum, there now exists a variety of evidence regarding the functional value of accessible attitudes. Such attitudes (a) orient visual attention and categorization processes in a useful manner (Roskos-Ewoldsen & Fazio, 1992; E. R. Smith et al., 1996), (b) ease decision making (Blascovich et al., 1993; Fazio et al., 1992), and (c) leave more resources available for coping with other stressors that one is experiencing (Fazio & Powell, 1997). Each of these research findings is consistent with the object appraisal function that attitudes have been postulated to serve (see Fazio, in press, for a more detailed review of these and related findings). An attitude, at least to the extent that it is readily accessible from memory, "provides a ready aid in 'sizing up' objects and events in the environment" (M. B. Smith et al., 1956, p. 4l), which yields a number of benefits for the individual.

3 DETECTING CHANGE 199 Costs of Attitudes? One cannot help but wonder, however, whether these benefits are not accompanied by some costs. Are there not some senses in which the possession of an attitude might prove dysfunctional? One potential cost of having a pre-existing attitude is actually well documented in the literature. Many investigations have shown that attitudes can have a strong biasing influence on the appraisal of new information regarding the attitude object. For example, research by Lord, Ross, and Lepper (1979) revealed that judgments of the quality of two purported scientific studies concerning the deterrent efficacy of capital punishment varied as a function of the participants' own attitudes toward the death penalty. Those with more positive attitudes viewed the study that reached a positive conclusion about the deterrent efficacy of capital punishment as relatively better conducted and more convincing. Likewise, those with negative attitudes displayed a bias in favor of the study whose conclusions questioned the value of capital punishment. Subsequent research using this same paradigm has found that this biasing effect of attitudes is all the more pronounced as the accessibility of individuals' attitudes toward capital punishment increases (Houston & Fazio, 1989; Schuette & Fazio, 1995). Similarly, Fazio and Williams's (1986) investigation of the 1984 Presidential election revealed a relation between attitudes toward the candidates and judgments of the quality of the candidates' performance during the nationally televised debates--a relation that, once again, increased as attitude accessibility increased. Attitudes, then, especially relatively accessible ones, can leave the individual fairly closed minded and inflexible (see Cooper & Aronson, 1992; Zanna, 1993). Instead of being open to the implications of new information regarding the attitude object, individuals with such attitudes display information-processing and judgmental tendencies that are biased by their pre-existing attitudes. As a result, such attitudes can inhibit the individual from according sufficient merit to the qualities of the object that might be viewed as incongruent with the attitude (Bassili, 1996; Bassili & Fletcher, 1991). Opportunities for experiencing a "change of heart" are likely to be diminished. In a case in which both the object, and one's likely outcomes on interacting with the object, have not changed since the time that the accessible attitude was developed, this poses no difficulty. It is this presumed constancy that makes accessible attitudes generally functional; the individual approaches (or avoids) objects that are likely to yield positive (or negative) outcomes, as personally defined. However, what if the attitude object actually has changed over time? Accessible attitudes may prevent individuals from judging the object in terms of the new qualities that it exhibits. In this sense, the individual is less open to a new experience with the object and may continue to approach an object that may now produce a negative outcome or fail to approach an object that may now provide a positive, rewarding outcome. This relative insensitivity to change would appear to be a potential cost associated with possessing an accessible attitude. The attitude may actually do one a disservice in the case of an object that has changed over time. In considering this possibility--that individuals with accessible attitudes may accord insufficient weight to new qualities exhibited by the attitude object--it occurred to us that the reasoning could actually be extended a step further. Such individuals might also be less sensitive to change in the object in the sense that they might be relatively unlikely to even detect that the object has changed. Consider a task in which one is required to indicate whether a stimulus is the same or different than it was previously. A judgment of this sort obviously is made by assessing one's degree of familiarity with the current stimulus, that is, by at least implicitly comparing the features of the current stimulus with the features represented in memory. However, let us also assume that the object, although it has changed somewhat, remains sufficiently similar to its original state that the changed object still activates automatically the evaluation associated with the original object for anyone who possesses an accessible attitude. As a consequence of this activation the slightly changed stimulus is likely to be assimilated toward the individual's attitude. Changes in a positively valued stimulus are assimilated in a positive direction, and changes in a negatively valued stimulus are assimilated in a negative direction. Such perceptual assimilation would enhance an individual's sense of familiarity with the current stimulus and wrongly suggest that the stimulus is an old one. Unless this tendency is countered by a more thorough featural comparison process, it will produce an error. If featural comparison is more extensive, then an error might be avoided, but at the cost of some additional time and effort. Hence, in the case of new stimuli that remain somewhat similar to the original, more confusability is expected when attitudes are relatively more accessible. Effects of Attitudes on Perception Both classic and recent research concerning the effects of attitudes on the perception of stimuli suggest the possibility of such perceptual assimilation. For example, research emanating from the New Look movement (Bruner, 1957) examined the relation between the value of a coin and perceptions of its size. Bruner and Goodman (1947) found that children tended to accentuate the size of valuable coins more than those of lower value and that poorer children tended to exaggerate the size of all coins relative to children from wealthier families. Although the correlational nature of this study sparked considerable controversy, the phenomenon was replicated experimentally by Lambert, Solomon, and Watson (1949). These researchers investigated children' s judgments of the size of poker chips after the children had had different controlled reinforcement experiences with the chips. For children in the experimental condition, the chips acquired positive value because, once earned, a chip could be exchanged for a piece of candy. Children in the control condition engaged in the same task in order to earn candy, but they received the candy directly, without any intervening exchange of a chip. After a 10-day learning period, the children were asked to estimate the size of the chips. Children in the experimental condition exaggerated the size more than did those in the control condition. More recent research by Powell and Fazio (summarized in Fazio, Roskos-Ewoldsen, & Powell, 1994) also concerned attitudinally biased perceptions. These researchers were specifically interested in the effects of attitudes on perceptions of informationally sparse events. As discussed earlier, many social psychological investigations have shown attitudes to bias judgments of new information about an attitude object. The accumulated evidence typically involves judgments made in the context of a complex and enriched environment-- for example, the televised Presidential debates (Fazio & Williams, 1986) or detailed summaries of purported scientific studies (Lord et

4 200 FAZIO, LEDBETI'ER, AND TOWLES-SCHWEN al., 1979). That is, social psychologists generally have studied attitudinally biased processing in environments that readily allow for multiple interpretations of the target event. If one were to imagine a continuum ranging from sparse to rich environments, it seems quite plausible that the role of the perceiver would be more marked for the richer end of the continuum. The richer the environment and, hence, the more features that are available, the greater the latitude the individual enjoys in terms of the specific features that he or she might notice and consider. However, Powell and Fazio's experiment demonstrates just how extensive and fundamental the influence of attitudes on perception can be. The informationally sparse events examined in this research were flashes of fight on a computer screen. Participants simply indicated whether the flash was within or beyond a boundary fine. The participants' responses were collected in the context of what was described as a computerized "tennis" game that was under development. The flash of light represented the "ball," and the participant decided whether each volley of the ball was in or out of bounds. Biased perception was examined as a function of the participant's liking or disliking (manipulated in an earlier phase of the experiment) for the target individual who ostensibly was playing against the computer. On target trials, the computer randomly selected and executed "shots" that appeared within 5 pixels of either side of the end line. The participants' responses (keypresses of IN or OUT) were recorded by the computer. Despite their knowing that their "calls" were being recorded only to assess the adequacy of the visual display and that, hence, they had no control over the game, the participants' responses were affected by their liking or disliking for the confederate. When the confederate was liked, errors that showed bias in favor of the confederate (calling a ball hit by the confederate as "in" when it truly was "out" or calling a ball hit by the computerized opponent as "out" when it truly was "in") were more numerous than errors that did not favor the confederate (calling a ball hit by the confederate as "out" when it truly was "in" or calling a ball hit by the opponent as "in" when it actually was "out"). In contrast, participants who had been induced to dislike the confederate showed a pattern of errors that favored the confederate's computerized opponent. Along with Lambert et al.'s (1949) results, these experimental findings attest to a powerful influence of attitudes on perception. Perceptions of stimuli are biased in the direction of individuals' attitudes. In the context of the question we posed earlier regarding the detection of change in a stimulus, these findings imply that attitudinally biased assimilation of changed features will occur. As a result, the changed stimulus is likely to be perceived as relatively more familiar when individuals had earlier developed attitudes toward the stimulus. This enhanced sense of familiarity may interfere with the detection of change. However, such perceptual assimilation is to be expected only if the changed stimulus remains sufficiently similar to the original to automatically evoke the attitude that had been formed regarding the original stimulus. When change is more marked, the original attitude will not be automatically activated and, hence, no attitudinally driven assimilation is likely. The Present Research We tested this reasoning in the present research by taking advantage of commercially available morphing software. The ex- perimental stimuli consisted of pairs of color photos of same-sex undergraduates. After digitizing each photo, we used morphing software to construct composites of each pair of photos. Because the software allows one to weigh the extent to which the composite resembles one photo or the other, we were able to create morphs that varied systematically with respect to their similarity to the original. In the detection phase of the experiment, participants were asked to indicate as quickly as possible whether an image was exactly the same as one to which they had been exposed in an earlier part of the experiment or whether it was different in any way. Prior to this detection task, the participants were exposed to the original target stimuli under one of two conditions. Just as in the earlier research concerning the functional value of accessible attitudes (Blascovich et al., 1993; Fazio et al., 1992; Roskos- Ewoldsen & Fazio, 1992; E. R. Smith et al., 1996), some participants engaged in an attitude rehearsal task while being exposed to the original images, whereas others saw the images equally often but were engaged in a control task that was intended to occupy them sufficiently to prevent them from rehearsing and developing accessible attitudes. Specifically, participants in the control condition were asked to estimate each target's height repeatedly. Participants in the attitude rehearsal condition repeatedly judged how attractive they personally found each target. This design permitted us to examine the effects of accessible attitudes on the detection of varying degrees of change in the attitude objects. Whereas the past experiments concerning attitude accessibility clearly demonstrate that attitudes, once rehearsed sufficiently, are likely to be activated automatically when the object is subsequently presented, there is little reason to expect judgments of height to be automatically activated once the task context has changed. Thus, attitude rehearsal is likely to result in automatic attitude activation during the detection phase of the experiment for changed stimuli that remain somewhat similar to the original. This, in turn, should initiate the critical perceptual assimilation process that has the potential to interfere with the detection of change. It seems far less likely that earlier estimates of height would be activated automatically during the subsequent detection task and initiate any assimilation toward the previous height judgment. Moreover, even if height judgments were to be automatically activated in a subsequent task, height estimates are unlikely to be characterized by the same breadth as attitudes in terms of their assimilative power. That is, a greater number of altered features are likely to be assimilated to judgments of attractiveness than would be true of height. Thus, for our purposes, the height estimate condition represents a viable, albeit potentially conservative, control. Experiment 1 Experiment l focused on the ability of participants with accessible attitudes to detect change relative to the ability of participants with less accessible attitudes. After the attitude rehearsal manipulation, participants engaged in a detection task in which they were shown the original photos they had seen earlier, morphs of varying degrees of similarity to the originals, and photos of never-beforeseen persons. Participants were explicitly instructed to detect whether each image was exactly the same as one that they had seen earlier or whether it was different in any way. Thus, the correct

5 DETECTING CHANGE 201 response for all the morphed images is to indicate that they differ from the originals. Participants responded by pressing one of two keys and were instructed to respond as quickly as they could without making errors. Both the responses and the latencies of response were recorded. We hypothesized that participants with more accessible attitudes would have more difficulty detecting change, as indicated by more errors or longer latencies, than would participants with less accessible attitudes. Whether the difference is more evident in error rates or in latencies ultimately depends on the speed-accuracy trade-off that the participants adopt. However, because the instructions emphasized the importance of avoiding errors, and because we chose morphing levels intended to facilitate correct discriminations (see below), our primary focus in the present experiment concerned the latency of correct responses. In contrast, Experiment 2 focused on error rates. Participants Method Sixty-seven female undergraduate students at Indiana University participated in the experiment as partial fulfillment of an introductory psychology class requirement. The data from 1 participant were not included in the analyses because she knew many of the people in the photographs; another participant failed to follow instructions properly. As a result, 65 participants were included in the final analyses. Stimulus Materials The target stimuli consisted of a set of 6 pairs of color photographs of women and 6 pairs of men, for a total of 24 individual photographs (12 of each sex). Six additional photographs of each sex were included for use as fillers. All photographs were head-and-shoulder shots taken against the same solid background. Volunteers had been paid $5 each to pose for the photos, and all had signed consent agreement forms permitting the use of their photographs for the laboratory's research purposes. The photographs were digitized as 256-color, resolution image files. One photograph of each target pair was of a relatively attractive person, and the other photograph was of a relatively unattractive person of the same sex. The attractiveness of all the photographs had been previously determined by undergraduate raters. Morphing software was used to create a series of five composites of each pair. The composites differed with respect to the weight assigned to each original photograph included in the morphed composite. The percentages of each photograph contained in the composite were 63/37, 50/50, 37/63, 25/75, and 13/87, where the first percentage refers to the weight given to the original and the second to its morphing partner. These particular levels of morphing weights were chosen on the basis of pilot studies. The pilot work indicated that morphs in the 63/37-75/25 range produced a correct response about 50% of the time when the participants were given the set of instructions used in Experiment 1. Morphs in which the original was weighted more heavily than 75% tended to produce a large number of errors--that is, failure to detect change. Because our primary interest was in the latency of correct responses, we chose the 63/37 level as our starting point so as to maximize the frequency of correct responses. Procedure The experiment proceeded in three phases. Participants were told that the purpose of the study was to see how people made judgments about faces, so they would be performing several different judgment tasks on a set of photographs. Part 1 of the experiment involved the manipulation of attitude accessibility. For 3 of the photograph pairs of each sex, participants saw the attractive original photographs, and they saw the unattractive original photographs for the other 3 photograph pairs of each sex. In addition, participants saw 2 filler photographs of each sex, for a total of 16 photographs per block. The photographs were presented by computer, so that each photograph was presented for 4 s in random order once in each of four blocks. A 1.5-s interval separated the presentation of each photograph. In the attitude rehearsal condition, the participants were ins~ucted to examine the photograph the entire time it was on the screen and then announce aloud into a tape recorder whether the photograph was attractive, very attractive, unattractive, or very unattractive as soon as the photograph disappeared. Attractive was defined as "more attractive than what you personally consider the average college student of that sex to be," and unattractive was defined as "less attractive than what you personally consider the average college student of that sex to be." In addition to stressing the importance of stating their own personal judgment of each photograph's attractiveness, the instructions also stressed the importance of examining the photograph the entire time it was on the screen, thereby encouraging participants to examine the photographs carefully. In the control condition, participants saw the photographs the same number of times and the same length of time but estimated each person's height to the nearest foot and inch as soon as the photograph disappeared. Our intent was to keep participants cognitively busy and, hence, to inhibit any tendency to form attitudes spontaneously. This judgment task was chosen as the control task, because judgment of height neither depends on, nor inherently implies, information about attractiveness and yet should keep the participants sufficiently occupied to prevent them from forming and rehearsing attitudes.~ To bolster our cover story that we were analyzing their performance on this task, when they had finished, all participants completed a task-rating form in which they rated how difficult the task was and how much easier it became as they proceeded through the four blocks. Part 2 of the experiment was concerned with the detection of change. Participants were told that we had taken severai photographs at different times of the people they had seen in Part 1 of the experiment. The participant's task was to press one of two buttons labeled SAME and DIFFERENT on the computer keyboard as quickly as possible without making any mistakes to indicate whether each photograph was one of the exact same photographs they had seen in Part 1 or whether it was a different photograph. Participants were told that the photographs could be either different photographs of the same people from Part 1 or new photographs of people they had not seen before. The task consisted of six blocks of trials. Through the course of the task, participants saw the originals they had seen in Part 1, 4 new fillers of each sex, and the morphed composites that varied in their similarity to the original. Each block contained 1 original of each sex from Part 1, 8 new fillers, and I image of each sex at each of the five morphing levels, for a total of 20 photographs per block. Each original and its associated morphs were seen once by the end of the task. Each photograph was displayed until the participant responded or until 4 s bad elapsed, whichever occurred first, separated by a 1.5-s interval. Finally, in Part 3 of the experiment all participants rated the original pairs of photos and the fillers on an 8-point scale, scored as + 1 to +4 for slightly to extremely attractive and -1 to -4 for slightly to extremely 1A pilot experiment involving 56 participants randomly assigned to attitude rehearsal and height estimate conditions demonstrated this manipulatiorl to be an effective means of enhancing attitude accessibility. When instructed to indicate their attitude toward each photograph as quickly as possible without making any mistakes, participants in the attitude rehearsal condition were able to do so significantly more quickly than were participants in the height estimate condition.

6 202 FAZIO, LEDBETTER, AND TOWLES-SCHWEN unattractive. 2 On completing the experiment, participants were fully debriefed. Results Z Att!tude Rehearsal Unchanged Stimuli Error data. Attitude rehearsal and height estimate participants did not differ significantly with respect to the proportion of the original photographs correctly identified as "same," t(63) = 1.56, p >. 10 (Ms =.88 and.86, respectively). Thus, attitude rehearsal and height estimate control participants performed equivalently when judging unchanged stimuli. Latency data. Because latency data are skewed, all latencies (in seconds) were subjected to a reciprocal transformation prior to analysis. To facilitate comprehension, the means reported in the text and figures have been retransformed into milliseconds. The time required to correctly identify an original as "same" did not differ for the attitude rehearsal and height estimate participants (t < 1, ns; Ms = 1,195 ms and 1,191 ms, respectively). The lack of differences between the two conditions with respect to both the proportion of correct responses and the associated latencies is important. It suggests that the original photographs were encoded equally well in the two conditions. Thus, differential encoding cannot be responsible for any effects that are observed on the changed stimuli. Changed Stimuli Error data. We analyzed the trials involving changed stimuli, that is, the morphs, by computing the proportion of photographs correctly identified as "different" at each morphing level. We conducted a mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) with one between-subjects variable (rehearsal condition) and one withinsubject variable (morphing level) on these data. The analysis revealed a main effect of morphing level, F(4, 252) = , p <.001. Participants' correct identification of a morph as "different" improved with morphs that differed more markedly from the original. The mean proportions of correct responses were.58,.75,.85,.90, and.94 for morphs in which the original was weighted 63%, 50%, 37%, 25%, and 13%, respectively. The ANOVA revealed no effect of rehearsal condition, F(1, 63) = 1.03, and no interaction between condition and morphing level, F(4, 252) = Thus, participants who were induced to develop accessible attitudes by means of attitude rehearsal and participants who made height estimates performed equivalently in terms of their proportions of correct responses. Latency data. The latency data permit us to ask whether participants in the attitude rehearsal condition required more time to achieve this equivalent level of performance. A mixed ANOVA on the latency required to correctly identify a morph as "different" revealed a main effect of morphing level, such that participants were able to respond more quickly to morphs that less closely resembled the original photographs, F(4, 252) = 57.25, p <.001. In addition, the predicted interaction between condition and morphing level was significant, F(4, 252) = 2.52, p <.05. The means for this interaction are depicted in Figure 1. Attitude rehearsal participants tended to be slower to respond correctly than were height estimate participants for the morphs that most closely resembled the originals, but this difference diminished as the -~ 1200 o ~ I I I I I { I ~ I 63% 50% 37% 25% 13% Weight Assigned to Original in the Morph Figure 1. Mean latency to correctly identify a morph as "different" at the various morphing levels. morphs became more different from the originals. These results suggest that when change in the stimulus was sufficiently minor that the morph continued to evoke participants' accessible attitudes toward the original stimulus, individuals' abilities to correctly detect change were hampered. We conducted an additional analysis using all the latencies, instead of only the latencies associated with a correct response of "different," as in the previous analysis. The outcome was very similar to the effects for the correct latencies (see Figure 2). The ANOVA revealed a main effect of morphing level, F(4, 252) = 55.54, p <.001, and a Condition x Morphing Level interaction, F(4, 252) = 2.66, p <.04. Once again, the two conditions differed more for the morph level that most closely resembled the original than for the other levels. The morphing level of 63/37, that is, the morphs most similar to the original, provided a unique opportunity to examine the correctness of the response as a factor in an ANOVA. Only for that morpbing level was the error rate such that all participants had both correct and incorrect responses. We computed average latencies for correct and for incorrect responses and subjected them to a 2 (response) X 2 (condition) mixed ANOVA, which revealed a marginally significant effect of condition, F(1, 63) = 3.23, p <.08, indicating that attitude rehearsal participants tended to respond more slowly to these morphs than did the height estimate participants (Ms = 1,334 ms and 1,190 ms, respectively). This effect was not qualified by the response factor (F < 1); neither was there any main effect of response correctness (F < 1; Ms = 1,276 ms and 1,244 ms for correct and incorrect responses, respectively). 2 Participants were not allowed the option of expressing a neutral response during the attitude rehearsal task. They were required to answer "very attractive," "attractive," "unattractive," or "very unattractive." Hence, no neutral response option was provided for this final rating measure.

7 DETECTING CHANGE ~ 1200 g ~ "-- Att!tude Rehearsal I I ] I I J I I I 63% 50% 37% 25% 13% Weight Assigned to Original in the Morph Figure 2. Mean latency to respond to a morph, regardless of the correctness of the response, at the various morphing levels. Attractiveness Ratings We used the attractiveness ratings participants provided in Part 3 of the experiment to check on the possibility that rehearsing an attitude might produce attitude polarization (see Downing, Judd, & Brauer, 1992; Fazio, 1995). A t test on the mean absolute value of these ratings revealed no difference between the attitude rehearsal and height estimate conditions in the extremity of their ratings (t < 1; Ms = 1.97 and 1.95, respectively). Therefore, extremity effects cannot be considered a possible confound with attitude accessibility in producing the effects that were observed. Discussion As predicted, attitude rehearsal participants did require more time to correctly identify certain changed stimuli as "different" than did the height estimate control participants. The Condition Morphing Level interaction revealed that attitude rehearsal participants had greater difficulty than did height estimate participants when the changed stimuli more closely resembled the original photographs. These data are consistent with the hypothesis and point to a potential cost of accessible attitudes.'change is less easily detected when individuals hold accessible attitudes toward the object in question--provided that the change is minor enough that the evaluation associated with the original stimulus continues to be activated. No differences were observed between the attitude rehearsal and height estimate conditions with respect to the original photos. If height estimate participants had been more accurate or faster (or both) at correctly identifying original photographs (if anything, the tendency was for height estimate participants to be less accurate), then one could argue that the height estimate task simply helped participants encode the photographs better than the attitude rehearsal task did, thus providing height estimate participants with better memory for the photographs. As there was no difference between the groups, however, the results cannot be attributed to such encoding effects. Nor were there any differences between the conditions with respect to the extremity of the attractiveness judgments that the participants expressed. If attitude rehearsal participants had formed more extreme attitudes than did height estimate participants, it would have been possible to attribute the results to attitude extremity effects. What we would like to suggest is that, when attitude rehearsal participants saw a morph that was similar enough to the original to evoke their attitudes, the morphed image was assimilated in the direction of their attitudes. Given an attitudinal judgment of (un) attractiveness, morphed features were assimilated in the direction of (un)attractiveness. As a result of this perceptual assimilation, the morph appeared all the more familiar. This global sense of familiarity with the morphed stimulus induced a readiness to respond that the stimulus was the same as one seen earlier. However, the emphasis that the instructions placed on responding accurately led participants to study the stimuli carefully to be certain of their response and, in so doing, participants became more and more aware of features of the morphed images that seemed relatively novel. Nevertheless, overcoming the initial response tendency produced by attitudinally influenced assimilation required additional time and effort. In contrast, height estimate participants did not develop accessible attitudes that would be activated in response to the more mildly morphed images; hence, they were less likely to experience perceptual assimilation toward their attitudes. As a result, height estimate rehearsal participants did not need to overcome any initial tendency to respond "same" and, instead, could correctly respond "different" relatively quickly. This reasoning implies that attitude rehearsal and height estimate participants should perform equivalently and show no difference in latencies for photographs that are different enough from the original that the attitude is not evoked. In such cases, the attitude would not be available as an assimilating force and, hence, as a positive contributor to one's sense of familiarity with the morph. The predicted Condition Morphing Level interaction provides support for this hypothesis. The difference was greatest between the two conditions at the 63/37 morphing level and diminished as the morphs less closely resembled the original. This logic also implies that participants in the two conditions should perform equivalently and show no difference in latencies for the original photographs. With unchanged stimuli, there are no novel features to be assimilated. The data for the trials involving the original stimuli support this hypothesis. Participants in the attitude rehearsal and height estimate conditions did not differ in either their error rates or their latencies to respond correctly. Experiment 2 Experiment 1 was geared toward the examination of response latency data. The morphing levels had been deliberately selected with the goal of maximizing the frequency of correct responses. In addition, the importance of responding accurately had been emphasized, and the stimuli remained on the screen available for scrutiny until the participants chose to respond (up to a maximum of 4 s). We believe that these characteristics were responsible for our observation of effects of the attitude rehearsal manipulation on the latency measure, but not with respect to error rates. Nevertheless, we do not believe the findings should be taken to mean that the "costs" associated with accessible attitudes when detecting the

8 204 FAZIO, LEDBETTER, AND TOWLES-SCHWEN presence or absence of change in stimuli are limited to individuals' merely requiring some 140 extra ms to correctly detect change. If our conceptual framework is correct, it should be possible to create a situation in which the detrimental effects of accessible attitudes are apparent on error rates. In particular, if the time interval available for scrutiny of the stimuli is relatively short, then the possibility of checking on and overcoming the initial tendency to respond "same" that is produced by the attitudinally driven assimilation process we have postulated to occur should be eliminated. Under such circumstances differential error rates are to be expected, at least for stimuli that are similar enough to the original to automatically evoke attitudes and initiate the perceptual assimilation process. We tested this reasoning in Experiment 2, which, in contrast to Experiment 1, was geared toward the examination of error rates. The morphing levels used in Experiment 2 were selected to increase the frequency of errors relative to what had been found in Experiment 1. Morphs that weighted the original photograph 75%, 63%, and 50% were presented in Part 2 of the experiment. In addition, stimulus exposures during Part 2 were relatively brief, 300 ms, and participants were instructed and trained to respond within an 800-ms response "window." Thus, this experiment emphasized fast responding after brief stimulus exposures, which we predicted would produce differential error rates in the attitude rehearsal and height estimate conditions. Participants Method Ninety-four female undergraduates at Indiana University participated to partially fulfill an introductory psychology course requirement. The data from 3 participants were excluded because they did not follow the instructions. Consequently, 91 participants were included in the analyses. Stimulus Materials The same set of 12 color photograph pairs from Experiment 1 was used in this experiment. As in Experiment 1, 12 morphs were created, 1 for each pair. Four of the 12 morphs (2 male, 2 female) were 75% related to the original and 25% to its partner, 4 morphs were 63% related to the original and 37% to its partner, and 4 morphs were equally related to the original and to its partner (50%). Procedure As in Experiment 1, there were three phases in this experiment. Part 1 proceeded essentially the same as before. Participants were shown 12 faces (6 male, 6 female) in random order and were asked to announce a judgment of either the person's height or attractiveness into a tape recorder immediately after (not before) the face disappeared from the screen. The faces were each presented a total of four times over four blocks, and each appeared on the screen for 4 s; the instructions were the same. Thus, as in the previous experiment, participants either rehearsed their attitude or a nonevaluative judgment about each of the photographs. All participants completed the task-rating form at the end of Part 1. Part 2 was the critical task. Part 2 was concerned with participants' ability to correctly identify photographs they had seen in Part 1 when they were required to respond very quickly. Participants were told that they would be shown a photograph that was either one of the originals from Part 1, a morph of the original, or a completely new "filler" that they had never seen before. They were informed that this photograph would appear for only 300 ms. Immediately after this photograph disappeared (after 100 ms), the photograph would be replaced with the word SAME?, which would remain on the screen for 800 ms. Participants were told that their task was to press a button labeled yes or no immediately after this question word appeared on the screen and before this word disappeared; all responses that were not made during the response window--that is, while the word remained on the screen--would be counted as errors. Participants were asked to respond "yes" only if the photograph that appeared on the screen was exactly the same as the one that had appeared in Part 1. Participants were instructed that they should press the no button if the photograph was different in any way, even if the difference was minor. During the critical task, participants completed six blocks of trials. Through the course of this task, participants saw the 12 originals they had seen in Part 1, 2 new filler photographs of each sex, and the morphed composites that varied in their similarity to the original. Each block contained 1 original of each sex from Part l, 2 new fillers of each sex (always the same), and 1 image of each sex at each of the three morphing levels, for a total of 12 photographs in each block. As in Experiment 1, each original and its 3 associated morphs were seen exactly once by the end of the task. Participants were allowed to rest between blocks if they desired. Because responding in the correct time frame was crucial for this experiment, participants were first given a practice task to accustom them to the timing parameters. The practice task was very similar to the task of interest. Participants were shown a photograph of an object for 300 ms. After 100 ms, the question word FOOD? replaced the first image. Participants were asked to indicate their judgments by pressing the yes or no button while the question word remained on the screen (800 ms). All participants saw three blocks of 10 pictures, for a total of 30 practice trials. On completion of the practice trials, all participants reported being able to respond within the correct time frame consistently. At this point, the experimenter reviewed the instructions for Part 2 and then began the task. Finally, in Part 3 of the experiment, all participants rated the original photographs on the same attractive-unattractive scale used in Experiment 1. Results All data were coded as correct or incorrect responses. In those cases where participants were unable to respond within the appropriate time frame, missing data were coded as incorrect responses. Considerable effort had been expended to ensure that participants understood the importance of responding within the timing parameters of the task and to ensure that participants were consistently able to do so in a practice task. Therefore, when participants occasionally failed to respond within the time frame allowed despite their best efforts, we felt justified in considering their inability to respond as errors. These cases were relatively rare. On average, participants failed to respond within the appropriate time frame in 2.88 out of 36 trials, or 8% (SD = 3.6). Furthermore, a t test revealed that participants' mean number of missing values did not vary as a function of condition, t(89) < 1. Unchanged Stimuli As before, attitude rehearsal and height estimate participants did not differ in the proportion of the 12 original photographs correctly identified as "exact same," t(89) = 1.27, p >.20 (Ms =.86 and.82, respectively). Thus, participants in the attitude rehearsal and height estimation conditions performed equivalently when judging unchanged stimuli.

9 DETECTING CHANGE 205 Changed Stimuli In the case of the morphed photographs, a "yes" response to the question SAME? was coded as incorrect, and a "no" response was coded as correct. As before, missing data were counted as errors. We performed a 2 (condition: attitude rehearsal or height estimation) 3 (morph level: 75/25, 63/37, or 50/50) mixed ANOVA on the proportion of correct responses, with condition as a between-subjects factor and morph level as a within-subject factor. This analysis revealed an expected main effect of morph level. As morphs became objectively more similar to the originals (e.g., 50/50, 63/37, and 75/25, respectively), participants were more likely to report (incorrectly) that they had seen the morphs in the first part of the experiment, F(2, 178) = , p <.001 (Ms =.56,.28, and.18, respectively). These means suggest merely that the task was relatively difficult and that participants were relatively more likely to confuse highly similar morphs with the original photograph. The predicted Condition Morph Level interaction also was statistically significant, F(2, 178) = 3.95, p <.025. The means for this interaction are depicted in Figure 3. Participants in the attitude rehearsal condition made more errors when identifying the morphs that most closely resembled the original photographs (i.e., morphs at the 75/25 level), but not when they were identifying morphs that were more obviously different. Attractiveness Ratings As in Experiment 1, participants also rated the attractiveness of the original photographs in Part 3 of the experiment. Surprisingly, and in contrast to the finding in Experiment 1 (as well as the finding in the subsequent experiment, a t test on the mean absolute value of these ratings revealed a difference between the attitude rehearsal and height estimate conditions in the extremity of participants' ratings, t(89) = 2.08, p <.05 (Ms = 2.08 and 1.91, respectively). However, this small difference in rating extremity, less than 0.2 of a scale unit, does not appear to pose a problem for interpretation of the error rate data. Rating extremity bore no relation to participants' proportion of correct responses at any morphing level (all rs <.08, all ps >.50). Discussion In Experiment 1, participants had been allowed up to a maximum of 4 s to examine the stimuli for the presence or absence of change. Under those conditions, participants with accessible attitudes toward the original stimuli were able to correctly detect change just as well as those with less accessible attitudes. However, those with more accessible attitudes required more time to reach this equivalent level of performance. The findings of Experirnent 2 confirm that the relative difficulty detecting change experienced by individuals with accessible attitudes (and, hence, the "cost" of such attitudes) is not limited to their requiring more time to be successful. When stimuli were presented for brief, fixed durations and the task conditions required quick responses, attitude rehearsal participants were less successful at detecting change than the control participants were. For morphs that were more similar to the original, attitude rehearsal participants made more detection errors, incorrectly identifying the morphs as exactly the same as the originals. The fact that these same exposure and task conditions did not interfere with the ability of attitude rehearsal participants to correctly identify unchanged stimuli as "same" indicates that the original stimuli were encoded equally well in the attitude rehearsal and height estimate conditions. Instead, it appears that attitudes toward the original stimuli were automatically activated when participants in the attitude rehearsal condition were presented with morphs that closely resembled the original. According to our conceptual framework, such automatic attitude activation initiated an assimilation process that diminished their perception of change. Without sufficient time to scrutinize the stimuli, they were not able to overcome this initial sense of familiarity produced by perceptual assimilation toward their original attitudes. As a result, attitude rehearsal participants committed more errors. O o 0.3.o S Attitude Rehearsal / / I I I I I 75% 63% 50% Weight Assigned to Original in the Morph Figure 3. Mean proportionof morphs correctly identified as "different" at the various morphing levels. /. Experiment 3 We conducted our third experiment with two aims in mind. The first was to examine the extent to which participants spontaneously detected change. In Experiments 1 and 2, the participants' mission was to detect change. They were explicitly told that some of the images they would see were different from those that they had seen earlier and were instructed to detect those that were different, no matter how small the differences might be. In everyday situations, individuals are not usually given advance notice that something or someone may be changing; neither are they told when it is in their best interest to look for any changes that may be occurring at a given time. Instead, they must notice the change spontaneously. We were interested in determining if accessible attitudes might interfere with the spontaneous detection of unannounced change, just as they did with the goal-directed detection of announced change in Experiments 1 and 2. Like the earlier experiments, Experiment 3 began with the attitude rehearsal manipulation. However, Part 2 was very different. Instead of making samedifferent responses to individual images, the participants in Experiment 3 underwent a procedure whose purpose was deliberately

10 206 FAZIO, LEDBETTER, AND TOWLES-SCHWEN left vague. They watched a presentation of an entire series of morphed images on their computer monitors, knowing only that they would be asked questions about the presentation later. At the end of the presentation they were asked for their reconstruction of what they had seen; for example, how many were photographs of new people, ones that had not been shown in Part 1 of the experiment? We hypothesized that participants with more accessible attitudes would be less likely to spontaneously notice change and, hence, would arrive at reconstructions indicating that fewer presumably new images had been presented. A second purpose of the experiment relates to the mediating mechanism of perceptual assimilation toward the automatically activated attitudes that we have postulated to underlie the effects observed in Experiments 1 and 2. We sought to determine whether participants with more accessible attitudes might report perceiving less change in a morphed stimulus than participants in the control condition would. Because Experiment 1 focused on latency to detect change, the response options were necessarily dichotomous. Change had or had not occurred. We were not able to collect information regarding how extensive participants viewed any change that they did detect, because we did not want to compromise the sensitivity of the latency data. Experiment 2 also involved dichotomous responses. Our interest in errors forced us to ask participants whether the stimuli were exactly the same as the original or different in any way, because an error can be defined objectively only when all morphing levels are considered to differ from the original. In Experiment 3, participants were provided with three response options. They were shown the very same images that had appeared in the presentation, this time responding to each one individually. They were asked to indicate whether each individual photo was one of the exact same photos they had seen in Part 1, a different photo of someone they had seen in Part 1, or a photo of a new person they had not seen before. We hypothesized that participants with accessible attitudes, relative to those in the control condition, would be less likely to consider a morph to be completely new and more likely to consider it to be just a different photo of someone they had seen before. Such a pattern of data would indicate that attitude accessibility leads individuals to perceive less change in the object. Participants Method Fifty-seven female undergraduate students at Indiana University participated in partial fulfillment of an introductory psychology class requirement. Stimulus Materials The same set of 12 color photograph pairs from Experiments 1 and 2 was used as stimuli in this experiment. Twelve morphs were created, 1 for each photograph pair. Eight of the 12 morphs involved a weighting scheme of 75% for the original and 25% for the morphing partner. Two of the remaining four composites contained 63% of the original and 37% of its partner, and the other two contained 50% of the original and its partner. We chose to emphasize the 75/25 weighting because performance data from the pilot studies, as well as extrapolation from the data of Experiment 1, indicated that a 75% morph produced about a 50% error rate when participants were permitted to study the stimuli for a relatively long time. That is, about half of the time a 75% morph was judged to be exactly the same as the original and about half of the time it was judged to be different in some way. However, we also were concerned that uniform or consistent levels of change might be noticeable to the participants. Hence, the other two weighting levels were included as a means of reducing the uniformity of the change that participants would witness. What is important about all three weighting schemes, however, is that each is sufficiently ambiguous with respect to "newness" to produce an error rate of about 50% and, hence, avoid either floor or ceiling effects. In addition to the 12 original pairs and the 12 morphs, 7 more female and 6 more male photographs were included as fillers. Procedure The manipulation of attitude accessibility occurred in Part 1 of the experiment. The cover story and instructions were identical to the procedure for Experiment 1. Each of the four blocks of trials involved 1 original from each of the 12 pairs, as well as 5 filler photographs of each sex, for a total of 22 photographs per block. Half of the participants performed the same height estimate control task used in Experiment 1, whereas the other half performed the attitude rehearsal task. All participants completed the task-rating form at the end of Part 1. In Part 2, participants saw a single block of photographs containing all 10 of the fillers from Part 1, 3 new fillers, and the morph for each of the 12 target pairs, for a total of 25 photographs. Thus, 10 of the photographs were exactly the same photographs participants had seen in Part 1, 3 were completely new photographs of people they had not previously seen, and 12 were composites that were open to multiple interpretations. We assumed that the relative infrequency and, hence, distinctiveness of new photos would lead participants to notice their presence, as well as the presence of any morphs that they spontaneously viewed as new. It is this information that should provide participants with a basis for their subsequent reconstructions of the presentation. Photographs were displayed randomly one at a time on the computer screen for 4 s, each separated by a 1.5-s interval. All participants were told to simply watch the photographs carefully the entire time they were on the screen, because they would be asked questions about the presentation later. The data regarding the spontaneous detection of change were collected immediately after the participants viewed the presentation. Participants were told that we had taken several photographs at different times of the people they had seen in Part 1. They were told that the presentation they had just seen consisted of 25 photographs and were asked to consider how many of the 25 that they had just seen were exactly the same as in Part 1, how many were different photographs of the same people that they had seen in Part 1, and how many were photographs of new people they had not seen in Part 1. To make this judgment task easier for the participants, they were randomly administered one of two forms of the questionnaire. The two forms differed only in the sequence of questions. One form of the questionnaire asked the participants to first estimate how many of the photographs that they saw in Part 2 were the exact same photographs they had seen in Part 1 and how many were different in any way from the photographs they had seen in Part 1. They then estimated how many of the "different in any way" photographs were new photographs of people they did not see in Part 1 and how many were just different photographs of the same people they had seen in Part 1. Participants were instructed to be sure that the first two estimates summed to exactly 25 and that the last two estimates summed to the number of photographs they had estimated to be "different in any way." The second form asked participants to first estimate the number of photographs that were of the same people from Part 1 and the number that were of new people not seen in Part 1. Next, they were asked to determine how many of the photographs estimated to be of the same people were the exact same photographs they had seen in Part 1 and how many were different photographs of the people from Part 1. Participants were in-

11 DETECTING CHANGE 207 structed to be sure that the first two estimates summed to exactly 25 and that the last two summed to the number of photographs they had estimated to be "of the same people from Part 1." In Part 3 of the experiment, participants saw the exact same set of photographs from Part 2, but this time they pressed a button on the computer keyboard in response to each individual photograph. Stimuli remained on the screen until the participant responded or a maximum of 4 s had elapsed. Three response categories were available: (a) exact same photograph from Part 1, (b) different photograph of one of the people from Part 1, or (c) new photograph of someone they did not see in Part 1. Finally, as their last task, participants rated all the original photos on the same attractive-unattractive scale used in the earlier experiments. Participants were then debriefed fully. Results Spontaneous Detection of Change Analyses focused on the total number of photographs estimated to be in the "exact same," "different," and "new" categories. 3 Initial analyses revealed no differences as a function of the two forms of the questionnaires. Hence, this variable was not included in the analyses reported below. The mean number of photos estimated for each response category is shown in Table 1. As is apparent from the table, participants in the attitude rehearsal and control conditions believed an equivalent number of "exact same" photos to have been presented (t < 1). Given this equivalence and the interdependence among the three estimates participants provided (they were required to sum to 25), analyses focused on the "new" and "different" response categories. A mixed ANOVA, with one between-subjects variable (attitude rehearsal vs. height estimate conditions) and one within-subject variable ("new" vs. "different" response category), revealed a main effect of response category, F(1, 53) = 30.97, p <.001. Participants were more likely to recall the photographs as having been of new people (M = 7.95) than as having been different photos of the same people (M = 3.49). ' However, this effect was qualified by a Response Condition interaction, F(1, 53) = 15.49, p <.001. Height estimate participants were markedly more likely to recall seeing a greater number of "new" photographs than "different" photographs. Rehearsal participants did not show such a pronounced tendency. As predicted, attitude rehearsal participants recalled seeing significantly more "different" photographs, t(53) = 2.84, p <.01, and significantly fewer "new" photographs, t(53) = 3.26, p <.01, than did height estimate participants (see Table 1 for the means). Thus, height estimate participants recalled having seen more photos of Table 1 Experiment 3: Spontaneous Detection of Change--Mean Number of Photos Estimated to Be in Each Response Category Response category Condition Exact same Different New Attitude rehearsal a 5.04a 6.36~ Height estimate a 1.89 b 9.59 b Note. Within a column, means that do not share a common subscript differ significantly (p <.05). Table 2 Experiment 3: Directed Detection of Change--Mean Proportion of Morphs Estimated to Be in Each Response Category Response category Condition Exact same Different New Attitude rehearsal.39 a.27 a.34 a Height estimate.44 a.13 b.43 b Note. Within a column, means that do not share a common subscript differ significantly (p <.05). entirely new people while watching the presentation than attitude rehearsal participants did. Directed Detection of Change The data from Part 3 allow us to examine the extent to which participants, perceived each individual photograph to differ from the originals seen in Part 1 of the experiment. The analyses focus on the participant's accuracy when judging the different types of photographs (new fillers, old originals, and morphs). Because a few participants occasionally failed to respond, we analyzed the data as proportions of valid responses instead of raw frequencies. Such failures to respond did not vary as a function of condition (all ts < 1). No difference between attitude rehearsal and height estimate participants was apparent in the proportion of the 10 original photographs correctly identified as "exact same" (t < 1; Ms =.93 and.91, respectively). Nor did the two conditions differ with respect to the proportion of the three new photos correctly identified as "new" (t < 1, ns; Ms =.93 and.95, respectively). Thus, all participants were quite accurate at correctly identifying "exact same" and "new" photographs. This lack of difference between the groups provides evidence that the original photos were encoded equally well in the two conditions. Attitude rehearsal and height estimate participants did differ, however, in their judgments of the 12 morphs. The relevant means are shown in Table 2. As is evident in the table, the two groups were equally likely to identify morphs as "exact same" photographs from Part 1, t(55) = 1.11, p >.25. This finding replicates the error rate data from Experiment 1. Given relatively long exposures and sufficient time to study the morphs, attitude rehearsal and height estimate participants did not differ with respect to their likelihood of incorrectly identifying a morph as exactly the same as the original. Given that the two conditions were equivalent for this "exact same" response category and that the response categories are interdependent (summing to the total of 12 trials unless the participant failed to respond to some trials), subsequent analyses focused on the "new" and "different" response categories, that is, the proportion of morphs construed as photos of new people versus the proportion thought to be different photos of the original people. A mixed ANOVA on the proportion of morphs identified as 3 The data from 2 participants were not included in these analyses because they failed to complete the questionnaire in the manner instructed.

12 208 FAZIO, LEDBETTER, AND TOWLES-SCHWEN "different" versus "new" revealed a main effect of response, F(1, 55) = 31.45, p <.001, such that participants were more likely to identify a composite as "new" (M =.39) than as "different" (M =.20). However, just as was true for the spontaneous detection data, this effect was qualified by a Response Condition interaction, F(1, 55) = 12.08, p <.001. As predicted, attitude rehearsal participants were less likely than were control participants to identify morphs as "new" photographs of people they had not seen before, t(55) = 2.38, p <.025, and more likely to identify them as simply "different" photographs of the people from Part 1, t(55) = 3.37, p <.001 (see Table 2 for the means). These results provide further support for the hypothesis that attitude rehearsal participants perceived less change than height estimate participants did. Attractiveness Ratings We once again used the attractiveness ratings participants provided at the end of the experiment to determine if the attitude rehearsal manipulation had produced an unintended effect on attitude extremity. As in Experiment 1, a t test on the mean absolute value of these ratings comparing attitude rehearsal to height estimate participants revealed no difference in attitude extremity, t(55) = 1.00 (Ms = 1.91 and 1.81, respectively). Therefore, extremity effects cannot be argued to be a possible confound with attitude accessibility in producing the effects observed on the detection of change. Discussion As in Experiments 1 and 2, there were no differences between attitude rehearsal and height estimate participants in the number of original photographs correctly identified as "exact same" during the directed detection task. Thus, the results regarding the detection of change cannot be interpreted in terms of differential encoding effects. Participants' reconstructions of the photo presentation revealed several interesting effects concerning their spontaneous detection of change. All participants overestimated the number of "same" photographs, apparently mistaking some of the morphs for originals. However, as predicted, height estimate participants believed that they had seen more change than the attitude rehearsal participants reported. They recalled seeing more photographs of entirely new people, and fewer that were simply different photos of the same people presented earlier, than the attitude rehearsal participants did. The data regarding directed detection of change confirm these results. Participants in both conditions were quite accurate in correctly identifying what were truly original photos and truly photos of new people. The two conditions did differ, however, in their responses to the morphs. Although the groups were equally likely to incorrectly identify morphs as original photos, attitude rehearsal participants were more likely than height estimate participants to identify the morphs as simply being different photographs of the same people and less likely to identify them as being photographs of completely new people. The equivalence that was observed with respect to the proportion of morphs incorrectly identified as "exact same" replicates the finding from Experiment 1. When provided with ample time to study the stimuli, individuals with more accessible attitudes were able to perform at an equivalent level of accuracy as those with less accessible attitudes. However, a new and important finding emerged from the present experiment. Even when the presence of change was detected, individuals with more accessible attitudes perceived less change than did participants in the height estimate condition. Attitude rehearsal participants were less likely to view the change as sufficiently extensive to classify the morphed photographs as ones of people never seen before. The perceptual assimilation process initiated by their automatically activated attitudes appears to have produced a greater sense of familiarity with the morphed stimuli, even when they realized that the photos were not exactly the same as the originals. General Discussion The present experiments provide important information regarding a heretofore unaddressed question: Are there not costs associated with possessing attitudes, especially accessible ones? The findings suggest that, as functionally beneficial as accessible attitudes might be in terms of providing a "ready aid" for responding to the attitude object, they do leave one relatively insensitive to any changes that the object might exhibit. When purposefully attempting to detect change, individuals with accessible attitudes appear to have more difficulty doing so. In Experiment 1, in which participants were provided with up to 4 s to scrutinize the stimuli, attitude rehearsal participants exhibited longer latencies in order to reach the same level of accuracy as control participants. In Experiment 2, which involved brief stimulus exposures and required participants to respond quickly, attitude rehearsal participants displayed higher error rates. As expected, these effects were restricted to morphs that closely resembled the original and, hence, were likely to automatically activate the attitude associated with the original. For such stimuli, automatic attitude activation appears to initiate a perceptual process in which changes in the stimuli are assimilated in the direction of the attitude. Such perceptual assimilation contributes to the perceiver's sense of familiarity with the stimulus, yielding an initial tendency to judge the stimulus unchanged. Given sufficient time to examine the stimuli and sufficient motivation to respond accurately, individuals with more accessible attitudes can overcome this initial response tendency, but doing so requires time-consuming effort (Experiment 1). Without ample study time, the perceptual assimilation process promotes errors, that is, failures to detect change (Experiment 2). The data from the directed detection task of Experiment 3 provide direct evidence in support of this perceptual assimilation process. Even when change was detected--sufficient change to declare the morph as not exactly the same as the original--attitude rehearsal participants were less likely to perceive the morph as sufficiently different from the original for it to be declared a photo of a new person. Instead, they were more likely to consider the morph as simply a different photo of a person whom they had seen earlier, that is, a person with whom they were already familiar. In most real life situations, though, individuals are not instructed to detect change but must notice any such change spontaneously on their own. They are not even given the vague instructions to "watch carefully" that the participants in Experiment 3 received. The data from Experiment 3 suggest that individuals with more accessible attitudes are at a relative disadvantage in terms of their

13 DETECTING CHANGE 209 spontaneous detection of change, just as they are when directed to look for change. Even when lacking any type of warning to be more vigilant than normal, individuals with accessible attitudes appear less likely to perceive change than are those with less accessible attitudes. The activation of their accessible attitudes toward the original object and the ensuing perceptual assimilation may enhance their sense of familiarity with the changed object, thus decreasing their likelihood of noticing change, Such a failure to spontaneously notice change is likely to have contributed to the attitude rehearsal participants' reports of relatively fewer photos of new people having been presented during the spontaneous detection task. At the time of their exposure to the presentation, participants were not aware of our interest in change relative to what had been seen in Part 1, or of our claim that we had available multiple photos taken at different times of the people seen in Part 1. They had no reason to consider and judge the extent to which a given photograph might differ from the original. Thus, their reconstructions of the presentations are likely to have reflected elements that happened to capture their attention during the presentation. Given the relative infrequency of truly new photos (3 vs. 10 originals) during the presentation, these new photos, as well as any morphs for which change was spontaneously perceived, are likely to have appeared distinctive. As they watched the presentation, attitude rehearsal participants appear to have had their attention drawn to fewer instances of "newness." Together, the results of our three experiments clearly indicate an effect of accessible attitudes on receptivity to change in the attitude object. Relative to individuals with less accessible attitudes, individuals with more accessible attitudes are less sensitive to change in the attitude object in at least two senses: (a) They have more difficulty detecting the presence or absence of change, and (b) they perceive less change when they do detect it. Whether detecting change is goal directed or more spontaneous in nature, the perceptual assimilation produced by accessible attitudes has the potential to reduce individuals' awareness of and sensitivity to changes in the attitude object. Where, then, do the present experimental findings leave us with respect to the question of the functional value of accessible attitudes? As suggested earlier, the answer appears to depend on whether the attitude object remains stable over time. If so, an earlier-formed and accessible attitude serves the individual very well. Given the complexity of the social world, individuals must somehow structure the numerous objects, issues, and people they encounter daily. The development of attitudes is one of the means by which individuals manage to function effectively in their environment. Attitudes structure objects, issues, and people along an evaluative dimension. To the extent that these attitudes are accessible from memory, they are activated automatically from memory when the object is encountered; they guide attention, categorization, information processing, and, ultimately, behavior. Moreover, they do so without the individual's being required to engage in deliberate reflection, which has the consequence of easing decision making regarding such objects and, hence, frees the individual from some of the impinging demands and stresses of the social environment. Accessible attitudes foster individuals' approach of objects that have been personally defined as hedonically positive and avoidance of those that have been defined as producing negative outcomes. In effect, they plot a safe route through the social environment. However, when the attitude object changes over time, that is, sometime after an accessible attitude has been developed, the attitude may actually prove dysfunctional for the individual. The present findings indicate that an accessible attitude can leave the individual relatively insensitive to any change that the object exhibits, interfering with the individual's ability to detect change and to weight such change sufficiently when it is detected. The implications of any such failures to appreciate changes are potentially very consequential. If an object has changed for the better, individuals may needlessly avoid an object that they now might find enjoyable. 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